A novel rule based technique to detect electricity theft in India

Abstract

It is high time to control and prevent power theft by manipulating the meter reading and tampering of the meter. It is possible to deal power theft by developing Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and smart grids. For most of the distribution companies, utility smart meters’ data is serving as wealthy source of information beyond billing. There are numerous methods for detection of meter inconsistencies and dishonest behavior like meter tampering based on past data. This paper proposes a “Rule Based” electricity theft detection methodology based on the detection of abnormal readings of phase voltages, currents and power factor communicated by smart energy meters to the central server of the utility in constant time interval of fifteen minute. Individual customer theft detection rate of 94.8% is achieved with 10% False Positive Rate, which is low. The proposed method is tested on real time data collected from smart meters installed in Raipur city of Chhattisgarh State Electricity Board India.